Pat Martens Balke, of St. Louis, rallies with other supporters of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious at a vigil in August. The LCWR met to respond to a Vatican rebuke. / Seth Perlman, AP

by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

The honeymoon between progressive Catholics in the USA and Pope Francis -- cheered for his humble ways and dedication to the poor -- may have ended Monday when he "reaffirmed" last year's stinging rebuke of most U.S. nuns.

Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella group of religious order leaders who represent 57,000 American nuns and sisters, were told Pope Francis supports the Vatican takeover of the LCWR initiated by Pope Benedict XVI last year.

A controversial report issued last spring by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) ripped into the sisters for allegedly spending more energy on social justice causes than on promoting church doctrine and for espousing "radical feminism."

In June, Archbishop James Peter Sartain, archbishop of Seattle, and two other bishops were assigned to revamp the group's structure and programming. Although the sisters called the original CDF report a "scandal" based on "misconceptions," their members voted in August to prayerfully participate in the Vatican-run governing structure while maintaining what they called "mission integrity."

Monday, the nuns' top leaders and Sartain met with Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller, head of the CDF, in Rome. Muller told them that while the pope "expressed his gratitude" for their contributions to "schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor," Francis also "reaffirmed" the Vatican takeover.

Muller told the sisters their job is to promote "cooperation" with local bishops and bishops' conferences, according to Religion News Service.

After Monday's meeting, the LCWR issued a statement calling their conversation "open and frank."

The short statement from Sister Florence Deacon, president of the group, president-elect Sister Carol Zinn, and executive director Sister Janet Mock, concluded, "We pray that these conversations may bear fruit for the good of the Church."

Conservative Catholic theologian George Weigel, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said Monday he expected exactly this from Pope Francis.

"He is a reformer and making clear that the LCWR's program in recent decades has been incompatible with Catholicism is part of the reform-by-purification that he is going to lead," Weigel said.

But Sister Simone Campbell of Network, a Catholic social justice lobbying group, said Monday that she would wait and see how this plays out across time and changes in Vatican bureaucracy that may be ahead under Francis.

"The censure (of the LCWR) has always been about politics. And politics are shifting in the church right now. We know when politics shift, there are opportunities and there are risks," said Campbell.

"But we are concerned that Catholic sisters below the decision-making level are caught in the bigger picture of Vatican politics. We're sort of the soccer ball here. My most optimistic self had hoped that CDF report would never be mentioned again but in light of the broader politics, I think it was overly optimistic of me," Campbell said.

John Allen, a Vatican specialist for The National Catholic Reporter and CNN, has described the tension between the sisters and the bishops as one that is really about "what it means to be Catholic in the 21st century."